Was the first basketball gym in Wilcox County history located at the Wilcox Female Institute?

Wilcox Female Institute

Last week in this space, I wrote about the early history of basketball in Wilcox County. High school basketball in the county dates back to at least October 1909 and probably further. A look back at all of this left me wondering about when the first basketball gym was constructed in the county.

Not long after last week’s paper hit the streets, Wilcox County native Scott Mitchell reached out to me with information about what is believed to be the county’s first gym. Mitchell directed me to the Dec. 8, 1938 edition of The Wilcox Progressive Era, which contained an article about how the old back wing of the Wilcox Female Institute was converted into a gym for Wilcox County High School. The story doesn’t come right out and say that this was the first gym in the county’s history, but several clues in the story indicate that this was the case.

The article explains that the Female Institute became the Wilcox County High School in 1909 and remained so until September 1937. That year, the high school moved into a new Public Works Administration building on the same campus. At that time, the old Female Institute building was converted into an activities building for the high school.

The old Female Institute’s back wing was converted into a gym, possibly the first in the county, by removing room partitions and the wing’s second floor. It was then wired for electric lights and an extra roof truss was added for structural support. Remarkably, all of this work was done by male students under the supervision of F.M. Barnett, who was the Vocational Agriculture teacher at WCHS.

Once completed, the gym had a seating capacity of 250 people with standing room for 125 more. The gym was 76 feet long, 36 feet wide and 23 feet from floor to ceiling. The gym also contained a balcony that went all the way around the room. It was four feet wide, 12 feet off the floor and could be reached by using the main stairway in the building’s front hall.

Interestingly, the total cost for the project was $1,595.78. That may not sound like a lot, but in today’s dollars that would amount to around $33,120.92. Obviously, the project was done as inexpensively as possible, and no doubt the student labor saved the school a lot of money.

From the article, it appears that one of the major costs was the opening and repairing of old fire places and the construction of iron grates to cover the fire place openings. Work on the balcony was also a big part of the project as was the construction of an electric scoreboard. The placement and finishing of the gym floor made up another big part of the project.

In the end, let me hear from you if you have any additional information on this subject. If you know of an older gym in the county or if you know the history of the gym at another school, please let me know. Perhaps there was a gym somewhere in the county that dates back further than 1938.